With the ambitious goal of kickstarting "a revolution in UK energy efficiency," England's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has just launched a new program called the Government’s Energy Efficiency Strategy. The goal is to cut the equivalent of 22 power stations worth of energy consumption throughout the United Kingdom by 2020. Though the UK has already made some significant progress in energy efficiency, the new strategy underscores just how much more opportunity there is to save energy in a nation that boasts an impressive stock of centuries-old buildings.

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The challenges of upgrading castles, cottages and ancient estates is small potatoes, though, compared to some broader structural challenges the UK faces, and the DECC is not shy about laying those out.

The DECC's new strategy makes the same point by quoting our own U.S. Secretary of Energy, Stephen Chu, who is famous for saying that "energy efficiency is not just low - hanging fruit; it is fruit that is lying on the ground."

Or, as DECC somewhat more drily puts it:

"Too often, governments have neglected the role that energy demand reduction can play in managing our energy system. Yet measures that reduce demand can contribute in a more cost effective way to meeting our energy and climate goals than supply-side measures."